I'm tossing this out here as I don't have any more hair to pull out. I thought getting ideas/suggestions from the masses may be fun and possibly helpful!

I'm attempting to write our wedding ceremony and vows. The vows I can get a handle on as they are personal, but I'm having a hell of a time with a ceremony. I'm googling and getting ideas but I thought it wouldn't hurt to ask if anyone has any favorite ceremonies, links, has seen a neat ceremony and wants to share, etc.

We're "planning" (playa-time not withstanding) to get married on Thursday afternoon. BEFORE the Meet and Greet...I do have my priorities after all.

Minxy wrote:IWe're "planning" (playa-time not withstanding) to get married on Thursday afternoon. BEFORE the Meet and Greet...I do have my priorities after all.

Oddly enough, that's my wedding anniversary (thursday, not whatever the date is) too. And I don't think I'm alone. I think Thursday is the preferred wedding date, not competing with the weekend extravaganza and not so early that hte guests haven't showed.

The Lady with a Lamprey

"The powerful are exploiting people, art and ideas, and this leads to us plebes debating how to best ration ice.Man, no wonder they always win....." Lonesomebri

Heh, interesting, Crypto. We only want Thursday because that's the day we met on playa four years ago. It will be nice to not have to figure out two anniversaries. It's an AWFULLY busy day, though. Not sure it will work.

Thanks for the sand ceremony idea, shykat! I'd never heard of that before.

Okay, here's brain dump of wedding rituals:1. Both celebrants have a lighted candle and together they light a third. Good luck keeping those lit!2. Each celebrant serves the other three sips of sake (or other refreshing beverage).In short, any symbolic act which dramatizes their committment to each other.

I was the maid of honor at one which was vaguely Wizard of Oz themed (Anti M, and I was around when they met, so I was a natural choice). He wore a robe which he took off, her vows were written on his body for her to read. There was a ceremonial chalice of wine for all to share in sips, a ceremony which included the symbolism of four elementals, and um ... dang, now I don't recall. It was good ceremonial wine. Ad they gave me a very nice ruby slippers pendant.And they rode out in that Star Wars art car, there was a storm trooper and a Princess Leia watching from the upper deck. Somehow it fit in with the whole Oz thing.

Minxy, sounds simple but one of the most moving rituals from my own wedding was when we had our friends and family (the really important folk to us) stand with hands held as a circle around us as the couple.

For us (as we had been together for a decade before we actually got married) the idea of our wedding as being about a larger social weave, and having those participate, observe, and affirm our commitment was surprisingly powerful. it blew me away that our people just seemed spontaniously to get into about a 20 second shout/hum/whistle/speak of affirmation. wow.

Just a thought, and fond memory.make of it what you will.

If the Temple is part of your significance (sorry I didnt see anywhere where you were holding this) ask one your friendly temple crew for Shoeshine. If we can meet up, I have a small wedding gift for you from the temple of Union (part of the Temple of Transition)

Shoe.

"Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."

Hey Shoe, yes, we are doing it at the temple. I've been in love with this years temple from the beginning. If I'd had any build skills I would have spent the summer in Reno building on it. =D

I do like that idea of the circle of friends/family. I'm not sure how many folks we will have with us. My daughter will be there and Will's brother...everything else is up to other people's whims. I don't know who will show up. The circle sounds very affirming, though, and if we have enough folks there I might use that. Thank you.

Hi ya Minxy - first I want to say, best wishes! I know you are excited (along with a whole other bundle of emotions trying to get this all straight)

I know exactly how you feel about writing the ceremony. I am not much of a formal writer and being diagnosed with dyslexia sure doesn't help with keeping thoughts and ideas straight for writing. However, I felt funny just using a ceremony that I found already written on the web, I felt like I wasn't putting fourth effort to write a good ceremony for my sweetheart and I to share.

So - with that said here are my tips... Combine the ceremonies you like to make your own 1 of a kind. I used at least 3 or 4 different ones (mostly on the same theme of LOVE) since my sweetheart and I come from 2 different spiritual backgrounds, and we didn't really feel right trying to combine them or include them since we are not overly spiritual anyway. We felt our ceremony should be about love and our gift of love to each other. I also worked in a poem about clay *which was representational of our souls* (which was totally fitting b/c I do ceramics) and art in general is something we both love.

What my sweetheart and I ended up with was wonderful (he helped do some editing once I got the jist)

We got our rings tattooed on (we both have jobs that would interfere with us wearing jewelry) so that was our best option. (however, trying to find a tattoo artist in VA to tat your finger was difficult especially b/c we do not have ANY other tattoos! We modified the "rings" part of the ceremony. We tied each others finger with a ribbon covering the tattoo then at the end of our vowes we untied the ribbon while saying "With this symbol I now entwine my life with yours forever."

We also did a unity painting during the ceramon I abstractly painted one half of the canvas with green & he painted his half with blue, then we folded the canvas and pressed it, then opened it - like an inkblot (We had some words in the ceremony that went with this while we were doing it.)

We got married at a music festival and we planned the wedding in 3 weeks. Crazy huh. We knew each other 3 years and had been engaged for a year, but my sweetheart was a bit stressed out over the whole trying to plan a big wedding thing (and personally so was I) We also felt like spontaneously planning and having the wedding was better, so that our families wouldn't be too upset about us getting married so far away and that they would not be there.

We had about 12 friends and they all LOVED the wedding and some even commented on how it was exciting and not boring b/c it wasn't the same ol run of the mill kind of thing - and it only took about 5 or 6 minutes for all the "words" part of the celebration.